ls internal API works faster than smb_stat

[shravan a]

Hi,


LibSmbClient exposes an api  *int **smbc_opendir*(*const* *char* *durl) which
accepts the parent folder path and fetches metadata about all its immediate
children and returns the directory handle to the parent folder. The api
*struct* smbc_dirent **smbc_readdir*(*unsigned* *int* dh) accepts this
directory handle(dh) and returns metadata as a structure (smbc_dirent) that
contains limited info such as smbc_type, dirlen, commentlen,comment,
namelen, name. Repetitive calls to this API fetches the next child metadata
in sequence and returns the structure. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give any
information regarding the resource size(important in case of files),
create/modified date time. To get these info, this library exposes two
API’s,

*int* *smbc_stat*(*const* *char* *url, *struct* stat *st) - that accepts
the url and

*int **smbc_fstat*(*int* fd, *struct* stat *st) that accepts the file
descriptor.

     Both returns the required metadata as a structure ‘stat’ which
contains all the time stamps(create, modified, access) and the size.  Both
needs to be invoked once for every child resource within the parent
resource. smbc_stat() is found to be an expensive task since it makes an
extra SMB call to the resource , while smbc_fstat() is found to be faster
since it accepts the file descriptor. But this still requires the file
descriptor which can be obtained only via another smbc_opendir(resource
url) or smbc_open(resource url).

  Another API I tried out is –

*Int **smbc_getxattr*(*const* *char* *fname,

              *const* *char* *name,

              *const* *void* *value,

              size_t size)

     This accepts the resourceurl, and the attribute name, returns the
attribute value. But this API also needs to be invoked once per child
resource within the parent folder which again is expensive.



This extra API call for every child resource still makes the whole process
expensive.


However, when I open a smb session from the shell "ls" command performs
very fast. The function that "ls" internally calls in "list_dir".

I would like to write a public API that would call the internal
implementation of "ls". Thoughts?


Thanks!

Shravan